Tiny Bird

This piece is mostly about the devaluation of innocence and sentiment due to constraints produced by time and cold formality accompanying urbanisation.

A tiny, wandering bird flutters through the smoggy air of Sydney CBD where streets are packed with incessant, honking motor vehicles; buildings constricted like a tight mail parcel stuffed with clocks, watches and timetables that strain the movements of people whose hearts are dense with worries about their empty pockets; where only particles of love and hope are sieved through the gaps between molecules of carbon monoxide and nitrous oxides that dart rife in the air, colliding into each other, not even bothered to apologise as they continue whizzing aimlessly through the maze of grey skyscrapers and  try to stain the white clouds in the sky.



Only the tiny, wandering bird has room in her little heart to feel and time to reminisce:



About the dry winds that soared and entwined

Rustling through the paperbark trees in the Great Sandy Desert

Where the auburn dingoes stood in the expanse of sand

Lifting their hardy paws away from the scorching dirt;

Where Thorny Devils, dappled in fiery colours, lazed on the rocks

Gathering scant moisture from the sharp Spinifex grass;

Where the elusive Hooded Robins banded together

Continuing their swift flight to obscure hollows

And the tiny, wandering bird’s voice echoed in the desert

From a spacious, little heart, warmed by the hot air,



that no longer has room to sing out as the circulation of sentiment is blocked by the filthy atmosphere. The molecules of toxic gases squeeze into the pumping arteries of the bird as the dissonant sounds of inane humans further stagnates the air with false, polite words that blocks their airways with slander.



Suffocated in her heart, the tiny bird finally drops into the mass of grey smog below.